Keith Emerson The Nice

This album is fantastic in its own way. Sure enough, Emerson's skill is shown remarkably in this large compilation of songs, even more so than with ELP (the piano improv)…

A new concert film and album documenting the May 2016 tribute show honouring the late Keith Emerson…

Off the Shelf is an interesting package of different recordings Keith has collected from over the years. Most of these have been bootlegged before but here you get them in a cleaned up nicely mastered package…

There are concessions that must be made on Keith Emerson and Greg Lake’s Live from Manticore Hall, starting with the absence of Carl Palmer - and then the occasional use of loops.
Too, the conversational aspect of the evening certainly works on its first listen, bringing us in with a confidential closeness. (Emerson, in an impish moment, recalls people asking questions about his pre-Emerson Lake and Palmer band: "The Nice what?") But once that context is understood, these lengthy segments quickly become extraneous detours away from what is often a adventurously re-imagined journey through some peak moments for both…

Originally, this collection was put together in 1972 by Tony Stratton-Smith from outtakes of the Nice's early stay at Immediate Records, and issued (at least, in the U.S.) with no explanation and little annotation, making it a bit confusing to longtime fans of Keith Emerson and the trio. Its timing was also unfortunate, in that a huge cache of record club copies of the Nice's first three albums on Immediate, pressed by Columbia Special Products, had shown up in cut-out bins at just about the same time. One had to listen closely to see that everything here was an alternate take of material from the band's first two albums. Essentially, Autumn 1967/ Spring 1968 (aka Autumn to Spring) was an outtake version of the group's debut long-player, The Thoughts of Emerlist Davjack, shorn of the two longest tracks from that album, "Rondo" and "War and Peace"…

The Nice were an English progressive rock band active in the late 1960s. They blended rock, jazz and classical music and were keyboardist Keith Emerson's first commercially successful band. The group was formed in 1967 by Emerson, Lee Jackson, David O'List and Ian Hague to back soul singer P. P. Arnold. After replacing Hague with Brian Davison, the group set out on their own, quickly developing a strong live following. The group's sound was centred on Emerson's Hammond organ showmanship and abuse of the instrument, and their radical rearrangements of classical music themes and Bob Dylan songs. The band achieved commercial success with an instrumental rearrangement of Leonard Bernstein's "America", following which O'List left the group. The remaining members carried on as a trio, releasing several albums, before Emerson decided to split the band in early 1970 in order to form Emerson, Lake & Palmer. The group briefly reformed in 2002 for a series of concerts.